OMG, I do love Shirley Dander! She is a glorious fuckup. Throwing herself into trouble, often fueled by cocaine, willing to use most anything as a weapon, she is always the center of chaos. Shirley gets a starring role in this Slough House installment. No monkey wrench this time (although she remembers it fondly), but she wields a mean plastic fork. She was paying attention during combat classes, that's for sure.
Mind you the gang's mostly all there. Roddy Ho is being his usual self—leading a rich fantasy life in which he believes himself to be suave and smooth, instead of a guy who loses his grip on a broom and sends it through a window at Slough House. It's the newest slow horse who finally gets him a date, negotiating with a woman that Ho was trying to convince to cosplay with him. And this new woman, Ash, is going to be a handful. She's already started a food war with Lamb, putting extreme spice in her lunch, left in the fridge for him to steal. He may have a worthy opponent with this one!
Of course, Jackson Lamb is much in evidence, making everyone nervous when he shifts position. They all back away on the relatively likely chance that there's a fetid fart in the offing. Is his grossness an act? He does look after his joes, despite their general tendency to bungle everything. And is he really assisting Diana Taverner, or has he set her up?
Herron does what he does best, he writes a twisty, convoluted plot, with cynical political bon mots placed artfully. He manages to suggest real people that we know from the news, while inventing realistic shenanigans for them to be sent prancing through, lying and scheming all the way. He seems to be telling us that we might as well make entertaining art from the news, rather than just feeling disgusted or despairing.
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